Case study: UK Department for International Development (DfID)

The Department for International Development (DFID) was formed as a UK government department in 1997 with the objective of fighting world poverty.

DFID’s mandate is to provide development assistance which contributes to poverty reduction. DFID is therefore mostly a grant-giving body, although it also performs an important research function and engages in policy dialogue/technical assistance activities.

DFID engages in both bilateral and multilateral funding. Although the distinction between the two can become very blurred, bilateral funding is essentially funding for a specific country or programme, while multilateral funding is non-ring-fenced funding for multilateral organisations to spend as they see fit.

We selected DFID because it is a key national donor agency with important influence on policy and programmes for poverty reduction and responses to climate change.

On the Publications tab above, we will release findings from this project about DFID's accountability capabilities and how the Department is preparing itself to tackle climate change. On the External documents and links tab, we will post key documents about these issues collected during the course of our research.